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Volume 5: Number 1: Article 3
Effects of Consciousness on the Fall of Dice: A Meta-Analysis
Dean I. Radin, Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Contel Technology
Center, 15000 Conference Center Drive, Chantilly, VA 22021
Diane C. Ferrari, Department of Psychology, Princeton University
This article presents a meta-analysis of experiments testing the hypothesis
that consciousness (in particular, mental intention) can cause tossed
dice to land with specified targets face up. Seventy-three English language
reports, published from 1935 to 1987, were retrieved. This literature
describes 148 studies reported by a total of 52 investigators, involving
more than 2 million dice throws contributed by 2,569 subjects. The full
database indicates the presence of a physical bias that artifactually
inflated hit rates when higher dice faces (e.g., the "6" face) were
used as targets. Analysis of a subset of 59 homogeneous studies employing
experimental protocols that controlled for these biases suggests that
the experimental effect size is independently replicable, significantly
positive, and not explainable as an artifact of selective reporting
or differences in methodological quality. The estimated effect size
for the full database lies more than 19 standard deviations from chance
while the effect size for the subset of balanced, homogeneous studies
lies 2.6 standard deviations from chance. We conclude that this database
provides weak cumulative evidence for a genuine relationship between
mental intention and the fall of dice.
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